Stephen Hawking: “Quantum theory introduces a new idea, that of imaginary time. Imaginary time may sound like science fiction, and it has been brought into Doctor Who. But nevertheless, it is a genuine scientific concept. One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a horizontal line. On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there’s another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience. But in a sense, it is just as real as what we call real time.”

Guess it depends upon what Stevo asserts is a "genuine scientific concept." Because it's about as useful as a bag of fertilizer. While it's certainly a Hawking concept, it's no where near rooted in verifiable scientific evidence. Me thinks he imagined imaginary time, and then asserts it to be science.

Look at it as mathematical helping tool.
I will borrow Hawking's words from his book The Universe in a Nutshell.

“One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds"

Physcists work with some math which currently decsribes our world as best as it can. We do not have the final theory that would describe everything. Gravity is not yet unified with other three forces, electromagnetic, weak and strong.
And current math has problems describing things like Big Bang. People speak of singularities which in fact it is just like saying "we do not know". So , trying to find another math that would help us see through and beyond.

Using imaginarary number - just math. What matters is then physical interpretation into our real world.

But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
-- 1 Thessalonians 5:21

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
-- Philippians 1:6

Hana: If you look at the Hawking's lecture, the paragraph that starts with: "If space and imaginary time...."

And that's one, enormous, unsubstantiated "IF."

Hana: Wanna understand if really (and i bet that it is not true) you do not need anything outside the universe to start the universe.

A) You need SOMETHING to start the universe - whether as part of it or outside of it does not matter - as long as it has certain eternal attributes.

B) Whatever started the universe had to be eternal! Either the universe itself - or some aspect of it - had to be eternal, OR whatever outside of it, that could have started it, had to be eternal. These are hard parameters, as nothing comes from nothing - which means some ultimate source of the universe would have to exist.

C) Whatever that original source of the universe is - whether itself or outside of it - whichever mechanism MUST have been eternal, with its eternal attributes ALWAYS capable and intelligent beyond our understandings. It is impossible that blind, random, non-thinking things can produce, lead to, or develop subsequent assembled and designed things requiring vast intelligence. This eternal thing or source could not slowly develop intelligence, couldn't have mere potential for such, because, as blind and unthinking, it could not strategize, see advantages, etc. It simply IS. So there is NO potential, for any such eternal thing, to develop, as the ability had to already and ALWAYS be part of this "thing's" eternalness. So, if God or some other eternal thing, key attributes of the God of the Bible still must have been inherent in it.

D) Lastly, an all-knowing, all-powerful, eternal God could not produce a universe without knowing precisely how it would turn out. To a non-intelligent source, stupendous beauty and vast harmonious designs and functionality would be no different than resulting things of random junk and chaos.

So real time would still have a beginning. But one wouldn't have to appeal to something outside the universe, to determine how the universe began. Instead, the way the universe started out at the Big Bang would be determined by the state of the universe in imaginary time. Thus, the universe would be a completely self-contained system. It would not be determined by anything outside the physical universe, that we observe.

Some scientists do not see a problem that "blind eternal universe" would have intelligent beings in it.
You know, you can have many worlds, so many, that having some beings in one of them - not a problem.

You say that blind universe cannot strategize, and so does not have potential to develop intelligent beings.
Unless the ability to develop inteligent beings is part of it.
Then I guess, for Hawking, universe has this part in it - ability to develop intelligent beings. Determined by the universe.
And it has key attributes of God of the Bible.

.

But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
-- 1 Thessalonians 5:21

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
-- Philippians 1:6

Hana: You say that blind universe cannot strategize, and so does not have potential to develop intelligent beings.
Unless the ability to develop inteligent beings is part of it.

"Unless the ability to develop intelligent beings is part of it."

Which requires Intelligence beyond anything we can possibly imagine or understand! To perpetuate or build intelligent things, intelligence is necessary. Blind, chaotic things cannot produce intelligence and grand order across a universe. It's not a logical thing to believe. But for those who suppose a Godless universe, their motivation and desperation to find a solution that has God-like capabilities without that solution being a thinking, incredible intelligence, leads the to imagine all kinds of possibilities, in which they can also speculate upon the rules within their imaginary systems. And no one can can argue against it, except by noting that there is no actual evidences that can support such a thing. And cobbling together a few known evidences with merely speculative ones is not a scientific endeavor, even though it might utilize some terminologies of such. And as for the huge gaps in such speculations, plugging those obvious gaps with one's imaginary, sophisticated-sounding fantasies is not harnessing the scientific method. But it does sell books. And yet, if it wasn't Stephen Hawking making such speculations, most physicists and astronomers would laugh at him. But the ones who do not, their anti-theistic bias is clear.